Reviews

Rated 0.5 / 5 stars2012-10-28 01:53:44

Way to easy, every gun is just a variation on shotgun with just increased damage/spread/shot rate and by a few levels in you will usually be one shoting every enemy every level and rarely taking damage.

Rated 2.5 / 5 stars2012-10-28 01:11:24

Guns suck.
No honestly, just firerate/spread is not enough to randomize weapons. I mean, if there were different kinds of damage (rocket/acid/ice etc.), different range, special effects - then why not. But now, you only need one gun - something with good spread and good damage - which renders ten slots kinda redundant.
Also, names could help identify the guns.
BTW, how is DPS even counted? To target hit by one of the bullets? Assuming all bullets hit a target?
Enemies suck.
They're nothing original - some are faster, some are tougher, some shoot bullets. Done a thousand times. No different species, no weaknesses, nothing. They're dumb and easy to kill.
Arenas suck.
Or should I say ARENA? Since there's one, and very small. And it is too small to allow any tactic beyond "keep the far away with something fast and dodge bullets".
Summarizing - game is severely flawed. If you intended it as alpha/beta of sorts, just a check if the engine works, then I say it was successful. But as full game, it falls flat.

Totally with you on the weapon names, and I thought about naming the rooms, too. The way DPS works right now, yes, it assumes all shots hit an enemy. It's less about finding a situational weapon and more about finding a weapon the suits your play-style, advancing a few rooms, then replacing it with a better one as the enemies get stronger. I'll think about elemental damage types though.

You're right that 10 slots is overkill. The fact that people are interpreting these all as shotguns tells me I definitely focused too much on spread as a means of differentiating them. In fact, the system as it stands now can produce machine guns and sniper rifles, it just tends to produce some type of hybrid most of the time. Maybe I'll change it so it decides what real-world category of weapon it's making first, and classify all the weapons that way before generating stats. I could do something different with the graphics, too, so you can tell at a glance what's a shotgun, automatic rifle, or pistol.

Scrolling levels are out of the question with this engine, but maybe I could pull the camera back a bit so everything's smaller. I felt like this scale was a good trade-off between graphics and maneuverability, but I'm open to changing it if you think it would improve gameplay. What type of tactical gameplay were you expecting, use of cover? Exploration? Send me a message about this.

More advanced enemies are coming, including bosses.

Thanks again. You really drilled down to the specifics with your review. Fact is, I had a beta test going on, but almost nobody was participating, so I decided to just release it as-is and get feedback that way. Thanks again.